May 2007

The 2007 Mashup “Totally Wired Teacher Award” will honor a trailblazing teacher who has successfully pioneered the innovative and educational use of social media (blogs, wikis, social networking, photo/video sharing) in the classroom. The award-winner likely had to overcome challenges from parents and administrators in order to use the technology, but because they understand how students use social media outside of school, they persevered with their initiative and worked collaboratively with students, ultimately sharing their insight and knowledge with the larger teaching community.

If you have anyone in mind, send their names, titles, etc. and a paragraph or two as to why they are deserving to jdaly@edutopia.org. The sooner the better. Thanks!

What’s been really interesting to me of late is how as a culture and as a society we are reacting to the changes that these technologies are bringing to our lives. I think it was spurred pretty much by the comments that Pete Reilly left here last week and the great conversation that ensued. And it’s also been coming from my own efforts to get some balance back into my life. As Jeff said, we really need to think about how to teach balance as well as technology.

The world today, powered by vast networks of information, connects and reveals us in ways we have only begun to comprehend. Groundbreaking technological advances have put us in intimate contact with others about whom we often know little and understand even less. As a result, many of the tried and true ways of working together and getting ahead no longer apply…I’ve come to believe that the innovations of the 21st Century will come not just in new products, services, or business models and strategies, but in new ways to create value and differentiation, innovations in HOW. The best, most certain, and most enduring path to success and significance in these dramatically new conditions lies not through raw talent and skill but through behavior over time (x).

Seidman makes a compelling case that the “hypertransparent and hyperconnected world,” where we now find ourselves requires us to rethink much of what we do, and specifically, how we do it. In a world where “information is infinite” it does no good to horde it. We must instead make it more accessible. In a world where we can collaborate with global partners, sharing is what drives business success and, I would add, learning. “Connect and collaborate” is the new model, and power shifts to those best able to connect.

The strain that much of our culture seems to be under from these shifts is because of how dramatic and how fast they are coming at us.

For centuries, local proximity determined the majority of our social functions, containing us in relatively homogenous environments. We dealt on a day-to-day basis with people with whom we generally shared a common culture and therefore understood easily the behaviors and signals that occurred in the spaces between us. Global connectivity sets that whole idea on its ear. We now find ourselves in a world where we are thrust together in all aspects of our lives without borders and without the homogenizing pressures of locality…Before all information became zeros and ones, our lives moved at a slower pace. We had more time to get to know each other and the luxury to value personal contact in nearly all of our dealings. Now, multinational companies commonly form teams of employers chosen from various divisions, various countries, and various cultures (28).

Distance no longer separates us, and that in itself is a huge shift for most educators to get their brains around. And not only that, but the

…ties that bind us are looser than ever, and there is a new us whose members change almost daily…Electronic communication is both a boon and a bane. It makes these new, powerful networks of collaboration possible, but it does so in a strange and fractured language (31).

One other key point out of many that I could mention here is the effect of all this transparency; basically, your past is your present. And that presents an important challenge: “As reputation becomes more perishable, its value increases. As it becomes more accessible, it becomes a greater asset–and liability (38).”

And so this informs our work of re-envision of what schooling means. As much as we may not like it, we can’t go back.

We will never become less connected. We will never become less transparent…With all these changes to the way we live, connect and conduct our professional and personal lives, the questions become: How do we now thrive? How can we turn these challenges into strengths (39)?

And, I would add for our purposes, how do we prepare our kids to thrive? And as an educational system, how can we be proactive instead of reactive?

So, it’s no longer what you do so much as how you do it.

Success now requires new skills and habits, a new lens for seeing and a new consciousness for relating. In our see-through world, there’s an overabundance of information and it flows too easily for anyone to control it and outfox everyone. You can no longer game the system and expect no one to find out. You need to stop dancing around people and start leading a dance that everyone can follow. Long-term, sustained success is directly proportional to your ability–as a company and as an individual–to make Waves throughout evanescing networks of association, to reach out to others and enlist them in endeavors larger than yourself, and to do so while everyone watches you (55).

So, are we teaching that?

Like I said, most of this is aimed at business, but it’s still an interesting take on what the ramifications of all of this are, for our kids and for ourselves.

Remember this about the first time in a year that you’ve really unplugged for a few days…reading a book, running every morning, playing with the kids, extending the patio, shoveling horse poop, weeding the garden, watching a really bad Memorial Day Parade, not even thinking about the blog…all of it felt really, really good. Like life was back in balance. Like that’s the next real learning to be done…keeping your balance.

Quote: Flixn puts video everywhere. Our users can record instantly from their webcam and post their recordings on blogs, in messages or comments, and even send video emails.Note: Pretty easy Flash video provided you have a webcam. Have I mentioned that I love my MacBook?

So I plunked down about $100 for a Flip Video camera that holds 30 minutes of decent quality video and have been playing with it for the past week trying to figure out if I like it or not. Right now, I think I do, just because it is soooo easy to use to get videos online fast. The quality from camera to the local drive is good enough to bring into iMovie or whatever editing program you like and make use of it. The quality of the video once you get it up on YouTube is about a 6, the sound is pretty bad, but passable, and in general, you get what you pay for. But, did I mention that it’s just very easy to use? And these days, that’s worth a lot.

Here’s a quick sample of my wonderful daughter making her pony purple:

Last week at the Personal Democracy Forum, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a story about how as an “older person” he had trouble with the fact that during his one-hour a week staff meeting, everyone had their heads in their computers. So he decided to ban computers from the meeting, and the next week, everyone around the table was leaning forward, looking much more engaged…until he realized they were all checking their Blackberrys under the table. And then, regarding this state of affairs at one of the most successful companies in the world, he said:

“This is a battle that we have lost, and I think it’s fine. And I think it’s a statement of how important this technology is, and I think it is a permanent change.”

(Click here to listen to the exchange between Schmidt and Thomas Friedman…apologies for the quality.)

Schmidt’s last comment was my first thought after reading, albeit a bit late, this post on Ben Wilkoff’s blog about a very successful wiki collaboration project he was doing with his students in Colorado and a class in Connecticut that was derailed when one of the Connecticut student’s mothers threatened to call state attorney general to complain about the site because:

1-there were three personal pictures — all on the map of the home page
2-some kids used their real names on pages or as a username
3-in my post on icon I identified that where I live and that I teach at a “blue collar school”
4-I had pictures of the school and the rooms which could provide a blueprint for a killer
5-some kids put personal descriptors “I am five feet tall with brown hair named Sam”
6-on my “lesson plan blog’ One thing i wrote down last Thursday was something like “Myspace words of Wisdom” which she interpreted as me telling the kids about how they should join.

This according to the teacher from Ct., who later in the most interesting comments thread writes:

Of course, just like everything else that gets banned, the wikis went underground. More kids created their own wikis in response to this than they did while my class wiki was active. So now instead of one wiki in with the whole team involved (not to mention me), there are now many wikis splintered across the wikiverse.

And so there it is. There is really the crux of this. We. Cannot. Win. This battle has been lost, the problem is most parents, and most educators just don’t get it yet. All this banning of cell phones and taking down wikis and filtering out blogs…all of it is our own little Iraq. It’s not working. It’s not going to work. And all these laws that non-technological legislators are proposing are just a last gasp attempt at a “surge” that is doomed to failure as well. More restrictions, more blocking, more battening down the information hatches is only going to drive it all underground and make the world of our kids less safe. And, it will deny us a chance to help our kids develop and employ the literacies they are going to need to succeed in their future.

My friend Warren Buckleitner will have a piece in the Circuits section of the New York Times tomorrow that does some raving about Scratch, the new Mitch Resnick offering from MIT. He spent about five minutes starting to show me what a constructivist cool tool this could be for my own kids, and now I’m chomping to let them have at it. Mind you, I have no programming brain, so I’m hoping to learn as well. Maybe my kids can teach me in a few days… Also, via Stephen Downes, this video which does some scratching too.

I love what Resnick says at the end:

“Our ultimate goal is to bring together a worldwide community of creators who are constantly using Scratch to create new projects, share them with their friends around the world and learn from one another in the process.”

Very cool. Mix ups and mash ups and programming for kids, creating global networks and collaborations, teaching one another. How little does that sound like school?

The thing that bothers me most when I see legislators, either national or state or local, putting up bills that are supposed to “protect” kids or make schools safer, is that none of them have a clue as to the technology that they are legislating. Case in point, this new proposal from the state house in Harrisburg, Pa.

Section 1317.1 Posession of [Telephone Pagers] Electronic Devices Prohibited.–(a) The possession by students of telephone paging devices, commonly referred to as beepers, cellular telephones and portable electronic devices that record or play audio or video material shall be prohibited on school grounds, at school sponsored activities, and on buses or other vehicles provided by the school district.

God forbid we manage to think about the phone as a learning device. I guarantee you that none of the sponsors of the bill have ever typed “define insipid” (or any other word, for that matter) into a text message on their phone and sent it to 46645? (Try it sometime.) I know I mention this a lot in my presentations, but I’m wondering why cell phones aren’t a part of my kids’ curriculum between now and the time they graduate from high school. I’m wondering why teachers aren’t picking up their cell phones and finding answers to the questions they’re asking, modeling the technology for their students. Why they aren’t talking about ethical and effective use instead of making sure kids check them at the door.

I mean seriously. Do we really think that in ten years’ time that my kids aren’t going to be using their phones in all kinds of ways that we haven’t even imagined yet?

Ah, what the heck. Maybe it’s better the kids just figure it out for themselves…

Announcing the second annual “K12 Online” conference for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice! This year’s conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a preconference keynote during the week of October 8. This year’s conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries.” A call for proposals is below.

OVERVIEW:
There will be four “conference strands”– two each week. Two presentations will be published in each strand each day, Monday – Friday, so four new presentations will be available each day over the course of the two-weeks. Each presentation will be given in any of a variety of downloadable, web based formats and released via the conference blog (www.k12onlineconference.org) and archived for posterity.

FOUR STRANDS:
Week 1
Strand A: Classroom 2.0
Leveraging the power of free online tools in an open, collaborative and transparent atmosphere characterises teaching and learning in the 21st century. Teachers and students are contributing to the growing global knowledge commons by publishing their work online. By sharing all stages of their learning students are beginning to appreciate the value of life long learning that inheres in work that is in “perpetual beta.” This strand will explore how teachers and students are playing with the boundaries between instructors, learners and classrooms. Presentations will also explore the practical pedagogical uses of online social tools (Web 2.0) giving concrete examples of how teachers are using the tools in their classes.

Strand B: New Tools
Focusing on free tools, what are the “nuts and bolts” of using specific new social media and collaborative tools for learning? This strand includes two parts. Basic training is “how to” information on tool use in an educational setting, especially for newcomers. Advanced training is for teachers interested in new tools for learning, looking for advanced technology training, seeking ideas for mashing tools together, and interested in web 2.0 assessment tools. As educators and students of all ages push the boundaries of learning, what are the specific steps for using new tools most effectively? Where “Classroom 2.0″ presentations will focus on instructional uses and examples of web 2.0 tool use, “New Tools” presentations should focus on “nuts and bolts” instructions for using tools. Five “basic” and five “advanced” presentations will be included in this strand.

Week 2
Strand A: Professional Learning Networks
Research says that professional development is most effective when it aims to create professional learning communities — places where teachers learn and work together. Using Web 2.0 tools educators can network with others around the globe extending traditional boundaries of ongoing, learner centered professional development and support. Presentations in this strand will include tips, ideas and resources on how to orchestrate your own professional development online; concrete examples of how the tools that support Professional Learning Environments (PLEs) are being used; how to create a supportive, reflective virtual learning community around school-based goals, and trends toward teacher directed personal learning environments.

Strand B: Obstacles to Opportunities
Boundaries formalized by education in the “industrial age” shouldn’t hinder educators as they seek to reform and transform their classroom practice. Playing with boundaries in the areas of copyright, digital discipline and ethics (e.g. cyberbullying), collaborating globally (e.g. cultural differences, synchronous communication), resistance to change (e.g. administration, teachers, students), school culture (e.g. high stakes testing), time (e.g. in curriculum, teacher day), lack of access to tools/computers, filtering, parental/district concerns for online safety, control (e.g. teacher control of student behavior/learning), solutions for IT collaboration and more — unearthing opportunities from the obstacles rooted in those boundaries — is the focus of presentations in this strand.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:
This call encourages all, experienced and novice, to submit proposals to present at this conference via this link. Take this opportunity to share your successes, strategies, and tips in “playing with boundaries” in one of the four strands as described above.

Deadline for proposal submissions is June 18, 2007. You will be contacted no later than June 30, 2007 regarding your status.

Presentations may be delivered in any web-based medium that is downloadable (including but not limited to podcasts, screencasts, slide shows) and is due one week prior to the date it is published.

Please note that all presentations will be licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

As you draft your proposal, you may wish to consider the presentation topics listed below which were suggested in the comments on the K-12 Online Conference Blog:

KEYNOTES:
The first presentation in each strand will kick off with a keynote by a well known educator who is distinguished and knowledgeable in the context of their strand. Keynoters will be announced shortly.

CONVENERS:
This year’s conveners are:

Darren Kuropatwa is currently Department Head of Mathematics at Daniel Collegiate Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is known internationally for his ability to weave the use of online social tools meaningfully and concretely into his pedagogical practice and for “child safe” blogging practices. He has more than 20 years experience in both formal and informal education and 13 years experience in team building and leadership training. Darren has been facilitating workshops for educators in groups of 4 to 300 for the last 10 years. Darren’s professional blog is called A Difference (http://adifference.blogspot.com). He will convene Classroom 2.0.

Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, a 20-year educator, has been a classroom teacher, charter school principal, district administrator, and digital learning consultant. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member teaching graduate and undergraduate preservice teachers at The College of William and Mary (Virginia, USA), where she is also completing her doctorate in educational planning, policy and leadership. In addition, Sheryl is co-leading a statewide 21st Century Skills initiative in the state of Alabama, funded by a major grant from the Microsoft Partners in Learning program. Sheryl blogs at (http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/). She will convene Preconference Discussions and Personal Learning Networks.

Wesley Fryer is an educator, author, digital storyteller and change agent. With respect to school change, he describes himself as a “catalyst for creative educational engagement.” His blog, “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” was selected as the 2006 “Best Learning Theory Blog” by eSchoolnews and Discovery Education. He is the Director of Education Advocacy (PK-20) for AT&T in the state of Oklahoma. Wes blogs at (http://www.speedofcreativity.org). Wes will convene New Tools.

Lani Ritter Hall currently contracts as an instructional designer for online professional development for Ohio teachers and online student courses with eTech Ohio. She is a National Board Certified Teacher who served in many capacities during her 35 years as a classroom and resource teacher in Ohio and Canada. Lani blogs at (http://possibilitiesabound.blogspot.com). Lani will convene Obstacles to Opportunities.

QUESTIONS?
If you have any questions about any part of this, email one of us:

Please duplicate this post and distribute it far and wide across the blogosphere. Feel free to republish it on your own blog (actually, we’d really like people to do that ) or link back to this post (published simultaneously on all our blogs).

So almost a year ago to the day, I had to opportunity to address about 50 superintendents in upstate New York, and when I posted here asking for suggestions as to what to say to them, I was amazed at the responses, as were the superintendents. Well, this Friday, I get the chance to address 120 middle school principals from New York City at a Middle Level Summit Conference, and I figure I’d see once again what the collective efforts of the group might yield. If nothing else, your thoughts and ideas and conversations are always a powerful model to the types of learning and connecting that can be done.

So I’ll ask again…if you had 75 minutes with this group, what one thing would you bring up/point to/challenge them with? What would be your most important message?

I’m moblogging on the train home from NYC with my can’t live without broadband modem and I am, in a word, juiced. It struck me in the middle of this really amazing Lessig-Benkler-Scoble-Boyd-Jarvis-Sifry-Rosen-etc. fest that as much as I love the asynchronous connecting and learning that happens when I read their work and their blogs, this f2f stuff still has immense power for me. I mean, I would gladly take a seminar course with any one of these people because of the energy that happens in meatspace. My brain hurts just listening to the ideas and observations that they all bring to the table. Even so, I know conferences like these are somewhat of an aberration.

A few quotes that made me take notice:

Lawrence Lessig: “I’m optimistic about the way in which the copyright conversation has evolved.”

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO: “People who are searching are people who are learning. And learning is always a part of a good life.”

Yochai Benkler: “We are beginning to learn what it means to have social production of the public sphere.”

Thomas Friedman: “The role of education in this world is “navigation” (as in helping student learn to navigate the many complexities of a Read/Write World.)

Seth Godin: “The really good news is that we can start electing people we are proud of.”

By many: The idea that the big change that is upon us is that the ability to participate is getting cheaper and easier all of the time.

I know all is not rosy with the world, that there are still huge inequities, that the world is not getting flat for everyone, that politicians are currently simply playing at Web 2.0, and that the underlying structures haven’t moved very far. But, recent pessimism in this blog aside, I’m leaving this day feeling pretty up about the prospects in general.

And just one note before the giddiness wears off. How cool is it to be able to connect via Skype with someone from England while on a train moving through the New Jersey countryside? I know, I know. I’m very, very lucky. But it helps me imagine a day…

Quote: Pure Digital Technologies has modified its low-cost Flip Video camcorder for all those impatient exhibitionists out there, adding one-button instant uploading to video-sharing Web sites. The Flip is a simple camcorder, requiring only four buttons to operate. And it is low-priced, at $120 for a 512-megabyte memory with 30 minutes of recording time, or $150 for twice that much. Don’t expect cinematic color or clarity; videos are of Web-acceptable quality that will not stand up to big-screen viewing.

Andrew Rasiej, who has put together the Personal Democracy Forum, is hitting hard on learning and education and technology as a part of a new challenge to the candidates in the presidential election. He mentions that kids in NYC spend on average one hour a week on computers in schools. Businesses, he notes, use computers a bit more often. The divide has continued to increase.

To address this, he has six key planks that he wants the candidates to commit to on the TechPresident Weblog:

Declare the Internet a public good

Provide affordable high-speed wireless Internet access nationwide

Support ‘Net Neutrality’

Instead of “No Child Left Behind,” our goal should be “Every Child Connected.”

Build a Connected Democracy

Create a National Tech Corps

I’ve been wondering if any of these candidates will take all of this on. I hope so.

So I’m sitting here at the Personal Democracy Forum listening to Thomas Freidman read from the three new chapters from TWIF 3.0 (due out in summer.) He starts talking about social activists and social entrepreneurs under the chapter title of “If It’s Not Happening, It’s Because You’re Not Doing It.” My brain is going, “Yes! Yes!” This is what I want my kids to understand…they can change the world in so many new ways. They can create products, test them, market them etc. all by themselves. This is an active world, not passive. This is a place where they can make an impact because, as Friedman says, it’s because it’s easier and cheaper than ever before. How do we prepare our kids more effectively for a world where they can create their own little long tail businesses and support their own long tail causes?

Later he asks, “What happens when all of your neighbors, all of your students have a blog? How thick will your skin have to be?” And he reads about the case in Texas at San Antonio High School where students AND their parents were sued by the school when the kids created a fake MySpace site for an assistant principal calling hear a lesbian and including negative comments and aspersions.

Then he says, “The most important competition moving forward is going to be between you and your own imagination.” And that he sees some positive signs in education that the US is starting to figure it out (despite the fact that “the people down in Washington are brain dead.”)

Hmmm…

I have to say, this being the first time I’ve seen Friedman in person, he does come across impressively.

Quote: The move could be another step toward the demise of the copy-protection
systems that have frustrated some online music buyers and created
confusion about compatibility between digital players and downloaded
songs. Critics charge that the software has slowed the public embrace
of legal digital downloads while failing to stop illicit copying, at a
time when the music industry is desperate for ways to make up for
declining CD sales.

Note: Another example of how the models are shifting and changing under the pressure of the ways we are using the technologies. - post by willrich